Wow, this year has gone fast, and we are nearly at the end. Term 4 is our busiest term with lots of fun and celebrations planned.
We have our Kindy Graduation on 8th December 2022 in the College Hall from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. This is to celebrate the children’s last year in long day care before they start full time school. All the kindy parents should have received an invitation, please RVSP on the form outside Koorlongka room on the sign in desk.
Our Christmas Party is coming up on the 9th December 2022 from 10:00am to 1:00pm. Please bring in a wrapped book with your child’s name inside the book and the cover. There will be lots of fun games and activities on this day. Koorlongka room is preforming the nativity play. We have been busying practising our roles and talking about the birth of Jesus.
We have been busy in the room finishing of our discovery topics and learning. Our bug topic was lots of fun searching the natural playgrounds for bugs and learning about safe ones and unsafe ones. This led into our learning on positional words. We played a fun game of Timmy’s clues every morning. This is like the show Blues Clues where Timmy the teddy would hide paw prints around the room based on the positional words we were focusing on. These three clues would then answer a question about Timmy for example what is Timmy’s favourite colour? the clues would be under red things, on top of red things etc. The children were really engaged with this and looked forward to finding the clues each day. We also played follow the leader where the children followed a teacher or friend calling out the positional words as they went (i.e. under the table, through the tunnel, over the toy etc).
Koorlongka children have been really interested in science experiments. We have been exploring with using descriptive words to describe what we are seeing. We have also been practising our predicting skills and using an educated guess to what we think will happen. The children’s favourite experiments were magic milk and bicarb rocket ship.
In literacy, we have been learning about basic story structure. Every story has a beginning where the characters and place are described or introduced, then a middle where a conflict or problem happens and then an ending where the problem or conflict is resolved or fixed. Some of us had a go at creating our own stories by drawing pictures in a book and the teachers’ writing. Others acted their stories out using costumes and props. We also had discovery tables that had props to some of our favourite well-known stories; like “E We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, “Wombat Stew”, “The Gruffalo”; for us to try and recall the story and act it out.
Lately, in literacy, we have been learning about the initial sounds in words. Children have enjoyed cutting out pictures from magazines and creating a letter poster. We also took photos of things around the room that started with the letters. Amira and Gabriel were playing around with the starting letters of their names thinking of animals and objects that started with the same letter as their name. So, we decided to come up with an object or animal that started with the same letter as all the children in our class. There were lots of laughter with this activity as we called each other by the object or animal we chose for the day.
We just finished celebrating Children’s Week where the children had more control and choices about what we did in the day. They had a go at being the teachers during mat sessions and chose what main activities we did for the day and where we ate for mealtimes. We spent a lot of time outside enjoying the sunshine this week. Grandparent’s Day was during this week, and we had a fun time out the front in the Wildspace at our family picnic.
National Nutrition week saw us exploring new vegetables and fruits. We used all of our senses to feel, smell, taste and see. We used our describing words to explain what we thought of these new vegetables and fruits. It was wonderful to see the children embracing the experience, trying the vegetables, and discovering new fruits and vegetables that they like.
Thank you Koorlongka children and families for an amazing year. Good luck next year at full time school. Some of you we will continue the fun and learning next year in Koorlongka.
Mrs Ralph
Kindy Koorlongka Teacher
